Ed Kilgore, writing about the immigration bill wending its way through congress remarks: “While I personally favor most of those Democratic amendments that are being defeated, the compromise is worth supporting, if it could actually become law.”
That seems wrong to me. The odds are overwhelming that six months from now there will be more Democrats in both the House and the Senate than there are today. That means that for the price of a small delay in time of passage, Democrats should be able to get a more progressive bill through in the next congress if nothing passes this year. If something does pass this year, a lot of the pressure for immigration reform will fade away and it’ll be hard to revisit the issue. Maybe the next congress would only let us get a slightly better bill or maybe it will let us get a much better bill. It’s hard — impossible, really — to know for sure. But it’s very unlikely that we’d get a worse bill. Under the circumstances, Democrats seem to have a lot of leverage and every reason to take a hard line in negotiations.
Am I wrong? Perhaps Ed can explain his thinking in greater detail.
